Look at More and Start Transforming

By Prophet

Inspiration is the most effective way to unleash innovation in yourself and your organization. Inspiration fuels creativity – and creative thinkers innovate. So how do you inspire? It begins with LAMSTAIH.

LAMSTAIH is our acronym for “Look At More Stuff; Think About It Harder.” It's a less complicated, easier to learn, and effective way to think differently. And it's complemented by a framework for unleashing creativity, the 5Ms:

• Mood - the attitudes, feelings, and emotions that create the context for inspiration and creativity.

• Mindset - the intellectual foundation of creativity, the baseline capacity each of us has for getting inspired, staying inspired, and thinking differently.

• Mechanisms - the tools and processes of creativity that help you engineer inspiration into the way you work and empower your organization to embrace the kind of behavior that fosters innovation.

• Measurement - takes into consideration qualitative and quantitative performance and provides individuals and organizations with guidance and critical feedback. Measurements send a strong signal of what is important and where people should focus their passion and energy.

• Momentum - the active championing and celebrating of inspiration and creativity that foster a self-reinforcing cycle for growing innovation. Momentum is an organizational priority for inspired leaders who have a clear understanding of the other four Ms.

Guided by the 5M model, look at more stuff and think about it harder helps people think differently. I once used the lessons of a farmer and his sustainable growing techniques to inspire organizational behavior at a technology protection company. Then, there's the time we took marketing executives from the United States Olympic Committee to visit a night club, a clothing store, a park, and a movie director to help generate fresh ideas for attracting a younger audience to the Olympic Games. Or the time a team from Disney joined me in a Richmond, Va. cemetery. The common denominator – we looked at more stuff and thought about it harder. Your desk is a terrible place from which to innovate.

Look at More…and become a curator of inspiration in your own life and in your business.

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